RomRaider

I think my buddy has finally talked me in to starting a new project (nope, the house isn't finished, and yep, it's football season, so we'll see how it goes) and I'm off to find the best web host for it. Maybe you guys can help.

We want to make a game in Java. Applet clients will connect to a server on our host, which acts sort of as a lobby to set up games, then when a game starts the clients will connect to whoever is hosting it. It shouldn't be too terribly taxing on the JVM. Especially when we start, there won't be many users, so lets say there will be at most 50 concurrent users on this host.

It's hard to say what the resource usage will be like until I get a prototype make, but lets call the starting required resources as "something decent." This host will also have to have dedicated options (along with good prices), as, if all goes as planned, we will hopefully (and eventually) have hundreds of concurrent users. All just sitting there with their TCP/IP connections, joining games and chatting, and the app logging some things to a mysql database.

So, anyone know what host I want to go with here? What do I want to look out for with webhosts offering a JVM? Should I use something other than Java (remembering that I'd have to learn whatever other language you'd recommend) ?

It may be worth investigating 'co location". Basically, you have your own server hosted in a local datacentre. Then they provide you with power and internet. Usually two of each, for single servers - and your own dedicated IP addresses (as many as you want to pay for).

Shop around, and basically what you want to look for is a datacentre that has redundant power (battery and generator backup), redundent internet (multiple providers), and if possible secure/monitored access (so no one can fiddle with your server ;:).

just google colo in your area. it will work out much more cost effective, as colo is cheap as chips, and bandwidth and data costs are next to nothing in the US, when compared to Australia.